Privacy check
Open your materials, follow the steps, then turn in your work.
Review your public health product for privacy and data-protection concerns.
1. Open your materials
Use the materials named in the first step below. Open lesson resources.
2. Start the work
List any personal or health data your product collects or displays.
Show all 5 required steps
- List any personal or health data your product collects or displays.
- Identify which items could identify an individual.
- Decide what data can be removed or aggregated.
- Note who should and should not have access.
- Write a short privacy statement for your product.
Lost your place? Back after a break? You should have listed your product's data, flagged what could identify someone, and decided what to remove or aggregate. If so, note who should and should not have access, then write your short privacy statement.
Check your work before submitting
- You identified identifiable data and reduced it.
- You wrote a privacy statement for your product.
3. Turn in your work
DueCheck Schoology- Hand in
- Privacy audit listing collected data, identifiable items flagged for de-identification, access rules, and a 3-5 sentence privacy statement.
How to submit and name your file
Use the submission route shown on today's today's page.
In Schoology, open your course and the assignment for this lesson. Attach your file, select Submit, and check that it appears in the submission.
PDF upload helpYou get two school days for every day you were absent, so this deadline moves with you.
How this lesson connects
Keep using what you learned last class: A message drives action because it is written at the audience's reading level and ends in a specific step, so the person both understands it and knows exactly what to do. Today: A public health product must aggregate identifying details because a name-free record can still be traced to one person through rare combinations, so protecting the individual requires coarsening the data, not just deleting names.
Optional: listen or watch a unit review▸
Need help? Warm-up, timing, and directions▸
💡 Big idea: A product must aggregate identifying details because a name-free record can still be traced to one person through rare combinations, so protecting the individual requires coarsening the data, not just deleting names.
- 0-5 minWarm-up: name one type of health data you would NOT want shared without your permission
- 5-20 minList all personal or health data your product touches
- 20-40 minIdentify which items are individually identifiable; mark them for removal or aggregation
- 40-55 minDefine who should and should not have access; document access rules
- 55-70 minWrite a short privacy statement (3-5 sentences) for your product
- 70-80 minExit ticket: name one change to your product that reduces privacy risk
- • A product that leaks personal data undermines the trust it needs to be effective.
- • Today you'll audit your own product design for any data that could identify a specific person.
- • Even well-intentioned health apps have caused harm by collecting more than needed.
- • Writing a privacy statement is not optional: it's a professional design standard.
- • Individually identifiable health data requires consent and protection under HIPAA principles.
- • Aggregation and de-identification are standard strategies for reducing privacy risk.
- • A privacy statement communicates data practices to users and is a product design requirement.
PLTW connection and today's work
Open Problem 5 in your myPLTW course shell and navigate to the current activity, then audit your public health product for privacy and data-protection concerns.
Today's stopping point: The message draft is done; privacy review belongs in the product-design phase, so confirm your activity guide.
PLTW activity titles identify the course connection. If your account will not open, use the posted materials for today and tell Mr. Mendoza. Do not mark an online activity complete unless you completed it.
Course connection
- Activity 5.1.2 Public Health in the News
Use the turn-in directions at the top of this page. Do not create a second submission unless your teacher asks for one.
Show another explanation or a smaller first step
Need help? Choose a starting point
Lesson resources: reading, slides, and vocabulary▸
The deck carries the prior idea forward, lets you inspect an analogy, maps the rule to biology, and ends with the same evidence decision and exit ticket used on this page.
Generated from this lesson's canonical data with a red-team citation check.
A message drives action because it is written at the audience's reading level and ends in a specific step, so the person both understands it and knows exactly what to do.
A product must aggregate identifying details because a name-free record can still be traced to one person through rare combinations, so protecting the individual requires coarsening the data, not just deleting names.
A review board sorts scientific evidence, stakeholder needs, possible benefits, possible burdens, and uncertainty before choosing a policy.
- Which statements are scientific evidence?
- Which statements express a value or priority?
- Who receives the benefit and who carries the burden?
Use science to estimate consequences, then state the value judgment and tradeoff that determine the decision.
A review-board model organizes reasoning but does not make one ethical principle automatically outweigh every other principle.
- • Evidence cards map to source-backed findings.
- • Stakeholder cards map to affected people and priorities.
- • The recommendation maps to an explicit tradeoff with a named uncertainty.
Driving question: Your product maps who in the neighborhood tested positive for something. How do you keep the map useful without turning it into a list that could out a specific person?
What you already know: A message drives action because it is written at the audience's reading level and ends in a specific step, so the person both understands it and knows exactly what to do.
New idea: A product must aggregate identifying details because a name-free record can still be traced to one person through rare combinations, so protecting the individual requires coarsening the data, not just deleting names.
Visual or model: F1. F1. A lesson illustration or teaching diagram for Privacy check. Use it with E1-E3; it is a model or context image, not experimental or patient data. What to notice: Trace the labeled system, test, or design relationship and identify which evidence should trigger revision.
- Observe or measure the relevant feature in privacy check.
- Organize the observation with a stable evidence ID.
- Apply this rule: Use science to estimate consequences, then state the value judgment and tradeoff that determine the decision.
- Choose the option the evidence supports and state the limit of the conclusion.
Real biomedical example: Your product maps who in the neighborhood tested positive for something. How do you keep the map useful without turning it into a list that could out a specific person?
What the evidence supports: E1-E3 and F1 support the daily take-home when the response meets the stated success criteria.
What it cannot prove: The package does not support claims beyond this lesson's or any real patient diagnosis.
- • audience: The specific group of people a product, message, or design is created for, whose needs and abilities shape every design choice.
- • privacy: A person's right to control who can access their personal or health information and how that information is shared.
- • usability: Use the lesson context and glossary entry to explain usability in your own words.
- • recommendation: A clear, evidence-based suggestion for what action to take, drawn from analyzing data, results, or a patient's situation.
- • evidence: The facts, data, and cases that carry your claim. Opinions are free; evidence costs homework.
Use it now: Choose one decision option. Cite E1 and E3, then explain how the rule connects the evidence to your choice.
Go further, optional: The source links below are optional enrichment. Every fact required for today's local evidence decision appears in this lesson package.
A defensible biomedical decision separates scientific evidence from value judgments, identifies who may benefit or be burdened, and states the uncertainty and tradeoffs that remain.
Limit: Scientific evidence can inform the options and likely consequences, but it cannot choose a single value-neutral answer.
Use science to estimate consequences, then state the value judgment and tradeoff that determine the decision.
Limit: A review-board model organizes reasoning but does not make one ethical principle automatically outweigh every other principle.
You identified identifiable data and reduced it.
Limit: E3 defines the classroom product or success criterion. It is not independent scientific evidence and cannot justify a clinical or causal claim.
PLTW-BFH-2027-04-27 · Simulated classroom evidence scenario
Your role: biomedical design team member
Decision: Your team must decide what the evidence from privacy check supports before submitting the notebook record named on today's page.
- • Combine small map areas into bigger ones so no age, zip, and condition mix points to one person.
- • Delete every name from the map data and share it, since data without names is already anonymous.
- • Nobody has looked at what other information about these neighbors could be matched against this map, so start there.
Response: State one choice, cite at least two evidence IDs, explain the rule that connects them, and add one limitation. Submit it as the notebook record.
Claim ceiling: Today's evidence supports a classroom claim about privacy check. It cannot prove causation, diagnose a real patient, or justify action outside this room.
Reason for review: Your team must decide what the evidence from privacy check supports before submitting the notebook record named on today's page.
Context: A product can protect the whole community and still betray individuals if it exposes data that can be traced back to one person.
- • T1: List any personal or health data your product collects or displays.
- • T2: Identify which items could identify an individual.
- • T3: Decide what data can be removed or aggregated.
- • T4: Note who should and should not have access.
- • T5: Write a short privacy statement for your product.
- • E1: A defensible biomedical decision separates scientific evidence from value judgments, identifies who may benefit or be burdened, and states the uncertainty and tradeoffs that remain.
- • E2: Use science to estimate consequences, then state the value judgment and tradeoff that determine the decision.
- • E3: You identified identifiable data and reduced it.
Measurements: Use only the measurements, units, graph, or counts supplied in today's task. No additional patient measurement is implied.
Figure finding: Teaching diagram for Privacy check. Trace the labeled system, test, or design relationship and identify which evidence should trigger revision. This is a teaching model, not patient or experimental data.
Uncertainty: This is a composite classroom scenario. Missing history, measurements, or confirmation tests remain unknown and limit the conclusion.
Mean = sum of values / number of values. Median = middle ordered value. Range = maximum - minimum.
For 2, 4, 4, and 10: mean = 20 / 4 = 5, median = 4, and range = 10 - 2 = 8.
Mean, median, and range keep the measurement unit. Order the values before finding the median.
Calculate the requested summary for today's supplied values, then write what it reveals and what it hides.
- • The solution must address the stated need in privacy check.
- • The decision must be supported by E1-E3.
- • The final product must make the success criteria visible.
- • Complete the work inside the 80-minute block.
- • Use only supplied or teacher-approved materials and evidence.
- • Do not trade , accessibility, or privacy for speed.
- • and evidence quality: must pass before scoring other criteria.
- • User need and effectiveness: highest scored criterion.
- • Time, cost, and ease of use: compare only after and effectiveness pass.
Test evidence: For each option, record the E1-E3 result that supports or fails each criterion. Do not assign a score without a named observation.
- Version or option tested
- Criterion met or missed
- Evidence ID and result
- Revision made
- Reason for the revision
- Need and user
- Criteria and constraints
- Chosen option and evidence
- Test result
- Revision and reason
Students often think Students believe that if they remove names, the data is automatically anonymous and safe to share.. The trap: Dropping names is not enough: a zip code plus an age plus a rare condition can re-identify someone just as surely as a name. Real de-identification means aggregating or coarsening data until no combination of fields points to one person, which is why counts in tiny areas are dangerous.
Data my product collects or displays:
- Visitor name and phone number (sign-up form)
- Child's age
- Home ZIP code
- Date of clinic visit
Identifiable items flagged: Name and phone number can identify a specific person, so they are the highest risk. ZIP plus exact date could also single someone out in a small area.
Reduce the risk:
- Remove names from any public summary; replace with a count ('42 children vaccinated this week').
- Report ZIP only at the neighborhood level, not paired with a single visit date.
- Keep phone numbers only for reminder texts, never displayed.
Access rules: Only the clinic nurse and the program coordinator should see names and phone numbers. The public dashboard shows only aggregated counts.
Privacy statement (4 sentences): We collect your name and phone number only to send you a vaccine reminder. We never display your personal information publicly. Public numbers are totals only, with no way to identify any individual. You may ask us to delete your information at any time.
This model shows the level of evidence and organization needed to complete: Completes the privacy-review step of the public health product: a list of collected data, identifiable items flagged for de-identification, access rules, and a short privacy statement.
- Date and label the entry.
- Record the procedure, observation, or design decision clearly.
- End with what the evidence means and the next step.
Keep the structure. Replace the question, facts, measurements, and evidence. Then recheck units, vocabulary, and whether the conclusion goes beyond the evidence.
Also due today: Submit your privacy audit and statement on Schoology today.
- CER:
- Claim, Evidence, Reasoning: make a claim, back it with evidence, explain your reasoning.
- SOP:
- Standard Operating Procedure, the exact steps to follow (especially in a lab).
- Tracker:
- Your PLTW progress log where you record completed evidence.
- myPLTW:
- The PLTW course site where you do the online activities. Find it in Clever with your Microsoft sign-in, right next to Schoology.
Tap the speaker to hear a term. Add two of these to your notebook glossary with a definition and an example in your own words.
Pick just 2 or 3 words from today and make them yours: write what each one means in your own words, name the context clue or evidence that helped, then give one example from what you actually did in Privacy check. Try your own words first; the glossary is there if you get stuck. This is voluntary and counts as extra credit, so keep it short.
Saved on this device. Show Mr. Mendoza or add these to your notebook glossary to claim the extra credit.
Classroom documents for this lesson are posted in Schoology. Open Clever, then Schoology, and find each one by the name shown on its card.
Open this when the class reaches this activity and use it to complete the required lesson artifact.
Placement rationale
Matched product and grant proposal by path:Biomedical-Innovations/Problem-5_Public-Health-Issue/00_Problem-Overview; keywords:public health. Score 138. Visibility: student-schoology (student-facing resource; link through Schoology rather than local path).
Open this when the class reaches this activity and use it to complete the required lesson artifact.
Placement rationale
Matched product and grant proposal by path:Biomedical-Innovations/Problem-5_Public-Health-Issue/00_Problem-Overview; keywords:public health. Score 138. Visibility: student-schoology (student-facing resource; link through Schoology rather than local path).
Use this after the required lesson work when you are ready for a harder application or a deeper connection.
Placement rationale
Matched product and grant proposal by path:Biomedical-Innovations/Problem-5_Public-Health-Issue/5.1_Public-Health-Issue; keywords:public health. Score 134. Visibility: student-schoology (student-facing resource; link through Schoology rather than local path).
Sign in to Clever with your district Microsoft account to open Schoology or myPLTW. Follow today's posted steps. If myPLTW will not open, use the posted alternative and tell Mr. Mendoza. Turn in your completed work through the Schoology assignment.
Practice: try a question, then check your answer▸
Claim ceiling for this check: Today's evidence supports a classroom claim about privacy check. It cannot prove causation, diagnose a real patient, or justify action outside this room.
Your dashboard shows 'Age 16, John Hay attendance zone, tested positive for TB.' You removed the name. Is this person protected, and if not, what fixes it?
Write an answer and pick a confidence to unlock the key.
Fast retrieval with instant answers, not the commit-then-reveal check above. Try each from memory first: write what you remember about the earlier units, then check yourself here.
Missed class or ready for more?▸
Run this before you touch the bench. It is built from the real lab procedure, so the decisions you make here are the ones you will make with the equipment in your hands.
What today's skills lead to. These are real health-science careers this course builds toward. Tap one to see, on the US Department of Labor's O*NET site, what the job actually involves, what it pays, and how fast it is growing.
Today is individual work you can do from home: complete the same target above, then submit your Notebook check.
Go to Schoology to turn this in. Submit one PDF. Put your first and last name in the document header. Name the file: FirstName LastName - Assignment Title - YYYY-MM-DD.pdf. If you cannot get in, see Mr. Mendoza. Do not skip the work.
Class still runs. Complete the online activity above (it's self-guided). Need the concept taught without a teacher? Use this authoritative explainer:
CDC Health CommunicationYou've passed Unit 2, so the optional extra-credit track is open. Complete reserved-unit work from home, including virtual labs, for extra credit. Each item shows its correct submission route.
Open the extra-credit track- CompleteEvery required part of the artifact is present, nothing left blank.
- AccurateThe science and the data are correct and match the evidence.
- Scientific reasoningYou explain your claim with evidence and reasoning (CER), not just an answer.
- Professional communicationClear, organized, labeled, and written the way a clinician or scientist would.
- SubmittedGo to Schoology to turn this in. Submit one PDF. Put your first and last name in the document header. Name the file: FirstName LastName - Assignment Title - YYYY-MM-DD.pdf. If you cannot get in, see Mr. Mendoza. Do not skip the work.
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